{"id":850,"date":"2019-01-01T13:49:52","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T13:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=850"},"modified":"2019-01-01T13:49:52","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T13:49:52","slug":"humanitarianism-and-pascals-wager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/01\/01\/humanitarianism-and-pascals-wager\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanitarianism and Pascal’s Wager"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may or may not be true that most humans have no hearts. No one knows — nor can know for sure — whether it is true. What we can know for sure is that if<\/i> it is true that most humans have no hearts, then that means doom for nonhuman animals. <\/p>\n

But if it is not<\/i> true that most humans have no hearts, then thinking, saying and acting as if it’s true also means doom for nonhuman animals. <\/p>\n

So the moral is that it is much better for animals if we assume that it’s not<\/i> true that most humans have no hearts — that, rather, most humans are exactly like us, but are not yet aware of the horrors that humans do to animals, nor of what their own role is in sustaining those horrors, nor of the fact that those horrors are completely unnecessary, nor of what to do to help bring them to an end. <\/p>\n

Ours is not only to help save animals but also to keep trying to open the hearts and minds of humans about the truth of animal suffering, its enormity and monstrosity, its gratuitousness, and what they can do to help end it. <\/p>\n

For that we must assume that most humans do have hearts.<\/p>\n

(The similarity of this observation to Pascal’s Wager<\/a> is ironic, not just because of the flaw in Pascal’s reasoning — which is that there is not one but a multiplicity of rival supernatural creeds on offer, all threatening dire consequences if their own dictates are unheeded — but also because most of those diverse creeds solemnly sanction the monstrous things humans do to animals, preferring to focus on the immaterial and immortal “souls” of humans in the eternal afterlife, rather than the bodies and suffering of all creatures living in the here and now.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It may or may not be true that most humans have no hearts. No one knows — nor can know for sure — whether it is true. What we can know for sure is that if it is true that most humans have no hearts, then that means doom for nonhuman animals. But if it … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Humanitarianism and Pascal’s Wager”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":851,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}